Language came after Thought
In order to be able to prove the statement 'Language came after thought', the words 'language' and 'thought' first will have to be defined. Language could be described as a system for formulating and communicating information, thoughts and feelings. There is, however, not one adequate definition of thinking, since most definitions do not cover all aspects of thought. It could be defined as a mental activity, but also as the way one's mind perceives one's senses. Having gathered this information, the concepts of language and thought will be looked at, and the relationship between the two concepts will be found.
Firstly, a distinction has to be made between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. There are infinitely more thoughts in our mind than we can ever perceive. The German psychologist Fechner, who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century, compared the mind to an iceberg. This iceberg has only a fraction of all the information and thoughts stored in the mind above the water level, on the surface of consciousness, but by far the biggest part of it is hidden underwater, in the unconscious mind. Recent research has shown that only a very tiny proportion of our unconscious thinking is converted to conscious thinking. This conversion processes like the search engine in a computer: this 'search engine' unconsciously selects the thoughts we want to be available for our conscious mind. Then a small part of the thoughts from the unconscious component of the mind, the part that is aware of, and to a certain extent induces the person's choice of action, is consciously translated into language. This means that the meaning a person wishes to express provides the strategy for the proper word.
In the conscious mind there are words, whereas in the unconscious mind there are only concepts. Creativity, for instance, can be found in the unconscious mind. Inspirations for paintings or for music compositions are found in the unconscious mind. Human beings, however, do not encounter them in the form of words. Musicians in general are much more likely to think in form of harmony instead of in a melody: they do not think in the form of chords, but in the form of harmony and melody. This harmony is in that musician's subconscious mind, and is expressed through his conscious mind in the form of a melody. Even scientists often do not think in language.
Eagleman talks about unconscious learning, and explores how much of what we do daily is learned and directed by the unconscious mind. The first example is changing lanes: when we’re driving, we do it without thinking. However, when asked to describe how they change lanes, many people are flummoxed. Changing lanes is so automatic that when the conscious mind tries to take control, it confuses our brains and our gears become out of sync. The second example is chicken sexers: people who can sort chick hatching even though male and female chicks look exactly alike. The third example is plane spotters: people who could distinguish between enemy and ally planes thousands of feet in the air. In both cases, the people just knew! They couldn’t explain how they knew. Rather, after trial and error, their unconscious picked up on the slight cues that allowed to them tell the difference. The conscious mind, on the other hand, was unaware of this
In today’s society there are many words that are used or said without giving it complete thought. For example, the word “identity” is something to which I have never really given much thought or even considered how I identify myself.
...nced, the information our subconscious soaks up. Creativity is what combines our consciousness with our subconscious, which helps us with things such as problem solving, strategizing, and art.
The unconscious mind is the lense though which all information is passed to the brain. Often decisions are made based off of an individual’s gut or instinct, the more academic definition of this concept is the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind process information and draws conclusions that often are not available to an individual’s conscious thought. However, this unconscious mind has
In the essay “Thought” by Louis H. Sullivan, he states that people don’t always need words just to communicate. There are several ways that individuals are able to communicate without words, they can express themselves by gestures and facial features, like explaining themselves to others. Sullivan believes that both thinking and creative thinking are better without words and that the minds is always working; therefore, it does not have time to place words together. In order to think clearly they must use other means of pondering; although, the mind works quickly it will take a long time to write what they are thinking because the mind continues without stopping. When individuals are reading they are not think their own thought exactly but what
Freud (1960) said \"that very powerful mental processes of ideas exist which can produce all the effects of the mental life that ordinary ideas do, though they themselves do not become conscious\" (p. 4). This is an indication that there are other parts of the mind in which thoughts occur. According to Freud (1960), \"the state in which the ideas existed before being made conscious is called by us repression\" (p. 4). It is by the theory of repression that the concept of the unconscious is obtained.
In my experience, I am aware of many cases in which my body affects my mind (I stub my toe & I feel pain) and many cases in which my mind affects my body (I feel an itch & I scratch it).
Most of the body’s functions such as, thinking, emotions, memories and so forth are controlled by the brain. It serves as a central nervous system in the human body. The mind is the intellect/consciousness that originates in the human brain and manifests itself in emotions, thoughts, perceptions and so forth. This means that the brain is the key interpreter of the mind’s content. Jackson and Nagel seem to resist identifying what we call “mental events” with brain events, for different reasons, while J.J.C. Smart takes the opposing view.
It is important to understand that words and ideas are supposed to refer to something. "The large tree in the front yard" refers to an actual thing that can be seen, touched and experienced. "The man walking his little dog last night at sunset" refers to an actual event that can be seen, observed and experienced. The realm of mind is an actual realm that can be experienced, and at one time there were words that accurately referred to this realm.
The acquisition of language has long been a debate in the world of linguistics, starting with B.F Skinner and Noam Chomsky in the 1950’s. Skinner, a leading behaviorist argued that language is just another behaviour learned through stimulus reinforcement, whereas Chomsky argued that it is unique. In his novel “The Language Instinct”, Pinker discusses the ins and outs of language while siding with Chomsky’s viewpoint. To further explain how language is not just a learned skill and to develop his own argument, Pinker goes as far as calling language an ‘instinct’.
...ite number of thoughts, feelings, and more. The infiniteness distinguishes this language from a the finite nature of sound and gestures in that important way, so this type of spoken, written language would still be the first of its sort that is acquired.
Prarthana,S. & Prema, K. (2012). Role of Semantics in the Organization of Mental Lexicon. Language in India.259-277.
Ideas are man's thoughts. They are fainter copies of impressions, and so they are images in the imagination that are remembered.
In this paper the writer is going to present an overview of the field of neurolinguistics which is the study of the mental faculties involved in the perception, production, and acquisition of language. In other words, the neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language.
«Traditional» researchers believe that great apes cannot meaningfully relate words. They believe that apes just use words which are mostly liked by their trainers in each concrete situation, but they can be meaningless to apes. For example, «only 12 percent of utterances were spontaneous-that is, 88 percent were preceded by a teacher’s utterance» (Herbert Terrace, 1979). In addition, a famous psychology professor at Columbia University, Herbert Terrace, argues that «even if an animal produced such a sequence» as «water bird,» «we could not conclude that it was a sentence» (1979). Moreover, «the words and word order may be meaningful to an English s...